WorldSurfers meeting #85 report

Have you noticed that we’ve just got over the middle of autumn? That’s according to the calendar of seasons commonly accepted in our country, though. But science-wise autumn starts on the autumnal equinox (which was September 22 this year) – a day that has 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness. The term equinox comes from the Latin words aequus, meaning equal, and nox, meaning night.

So even though on September 12 autumn was not there yet from scientific point of view, its presence was all in the air, and our club members and guests were granted a wonderful chance by the Toastmaster Yulia Tokareva to share everything they think and feel about this season at WS meeting #85. Check the report below to learn how it was in more detail.

Veronica Tolpekina delivered a very practical speech based on her experience of travelling. In her CC project #8 entitled “The tricks of a blonde traveller” Veronica spoke about her trip to France and explained how she managed to visit almost a dozen of French cities with practically no expenses. Intrigued, aren’t you? Watch the video of Veronica’s speech on our Youtube channel to learn how she was able to do it!

Technology is developing at rushing pace nowadays, and our members prefer to stay up-to-date. A very vivid evidence of that was provided by our devoted member Alexey Lobzov who delivered an advanced project #2 from the manual “Technical presentations“. In his speech entitled “Let’s add a pinch of innovation to our meetings” Alexey gave a profound insight into which latest IT developments could be applied to streamline the workflow of our club meetings. By the way, Alexey’s speech served as a starting point for some significant technological changes in our club. We will tell you about them in our next report – stay tuned!

Another useful, hands-on project from The Successful club series manual was delivered by Maxim Luchinin. Maxim gave a speech entitled “Evaluation: why and how?“, in which he provided several reasons why giving feedback for speeches is essential for every participant in Toastmasters meetings – speakers, evaluators and audience as a whole. In addition to it, Maxim shared several tips on how to make evaluations effective and get the most out of each feedback.

Table Topics session was led by one of the most experienced and deep-thinking members of our club, Henry Norman. Henry launched an interesting discussion about commitments. Each Table Topics participant was encouraged to think over the difference between the notions of intentions, promises and obligations and provide his or her personal view on where exactly there is a border between these concepts, and whether or not they have to do anything at all with honour.

We would like to say big thanks to everyone who contributed to making this meeting as bright and colorful as autumn leaves. Stay tuned, check our YouTube channel to watch the speakers’ performance, and see you very soon!